


Chasing Rabbits

by suitesamba



Category: Sherlock (TV)
Genre: M/M, Retirementlock
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-07-21
Updated: 2014-09-10
Packaged: 2018-02-09 18:29:10
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 4
Words: 3,283
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1993266
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/suitesamba/pseuds/suitesamba
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>When John dreams, Sherlock lets him be.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chasing Rabbits

**Author's Note:**

> I spent the weekend at my sister's lake house, and watched her dog chase rabbits in her sleep. How I got from that to retirement lock I'm not sure, but I did.
> 
> This is a short stand-alone now, but i think I like the verse, and will probably add more.

John runs in his dreams.

Like a sleeping dog chasing an imagined rabbit, his legs twitch, his feet arch, his toes grip ethereal pavement. He is lying on his side, uncovered, flesh patterned by early morning sunlight teasing through the leaves of the beech outside the window.

He is running through alleyways, jumping from fire escapes, dodging behind bins, quick and quiet on his feet. His chest heaves with the exertion, his left hand tight against his hip, index finger bent around the ghost of a trigger.

Sherlock watches him, legs folded into the old chair brought here from Baker Street. He’s been outside already, had a look at the hives, and he’s put the kettle on for tea, and come in to wake John.

But he won’t wake him - not yet, not while John lies there, bristling with adrenaline, on the knife’s edge of danger.

This is no nightmare.

This is a dream memory of youth, a call out to days gone by, the resurfacing of byways paved over with old men’s war stories.

This is John in his element.

Like the old dog that spends his days dozing in the sun, venturing outside now and again to sniff the air and eye the horizon, he still yearns for the chase.

So Sherlock lets him sleep, lets the dreams play out.

And Sherlock falls asleep there, watching John, and he dreams his parallel dream, where there are mazes and labyrinths, blind alleys, three dimensional cityscapes. Where there are tube stations and bonfires, swimming pools and hospital beds.

Where there is falling - falling.

And where always, always – if he’s fast enough, clever enough, brave enough – always at the end – there is John.


	2. When They Mean It

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Sherlock doesn't think John really means it when he threatens to leave the stingers in if he doesn't keep his gloves on when tending the bees.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> An add-on verse to "Chasing Rabbits."

ooOoo

In his retirement, Mycroft is entirely regimented and utterly boring. He’s into his seventies now, and somehow still has a finger on the British government, though he’s lost his lock on Sherlock now that he and John have moved to Sussex.

Greg Lestrade meets with the old crew on Tuesdays at the pub. He’s got a photo of his grandchildren as the wallpaper on his mobile. He does a bit of detective work on the side, but nothing too rigorous, not since the knee replacement.

Mrs. Hudson is in her nineties, and lives with her niece just outside London. She’s still mobile, though her mind is beginning to wander. John and Sherlock visit her every month, and take her peaches and honey, bunches of daisies or roses from the garden.

Sherlock and John are an unqualified mess.

Age had rounded some edges, sharpened others.

They’ve moved to a small home in Sussex, a stone cottage with gardens and bee hives, an expansive kitchen with nooks and crannies to lose all manner of things. John goes into the village a morning or two a week to help out at the local clinic, and has the chickens to tend, and the garden and fruit trees. He’s working on a book about Sherlock, though Sherlock thinks he’s writing the memoirs of an army doctor.

Sherlock hates the chickens as much as John hates the bees, though he loves the fresh eggs as much as John loves the honey.

The chickens may have begun as a bit of passive aggression on John’s part. He’s glad Sherlock has an obsession to replace solving crimes, though he still takes the occasional case in London, but he wishes he’d wear his protective gear correctly, and not get stung so frequently. Sherlock hates, in particular, the gloves and gauntlets. It’s his arthritis, John knows; he’s clumsier with the gloves than without them.

John nags. Sherlock ignores him. John gets angry and threatens to leave the bloody stingers in next time to fester. Sherlock promises to wear the gloves, and keeps his promise for more than a week, until the day he cannot pry out a honey-laden frame with the hive tool. He pulls the glove off his right hand in frustration and drops it to the ground, glancing at the cottage, and continues to work. He’s been stung seventeen times on his wrist and hand when he finally puts the lid back on the hive.

John is napping on the sofa when Sherlock comes in. He doesn’t let the screen door bang but closes it quietly, then tiptoes past John and ducks into their bedroom. He finds his reading glasses on the nightstand, and, holding his right arm against his chest, lowers himself to his knees, grunting softly, to extract John’s medical kit from under the bed.

He almost calls out to John, telling him it’s high time to store the kit somewhere that doesn’t require kneeling, but he remembers in time.

He’s made a right mess of himself twenty minutes later, working left-handed in inadequate light. He’s a smart man, some would way quite brilliant, and he knows he’s made a huge blunder.

John opens his eyes because something is blocking the lovely sunlight that was warming his middle. And it’s Sherlock, of course, standing there like a child who’s broken mum’s favorite teacup and is holding the pieces behind his back, awaiting the inevitable punishment.

John sits up with the appropriate groans of a man of his age, blinks a few times, then reaches for his glasses. He finds them sitting on top of his medical kit, which was not on the end table when he fell asleep an hour ago.

He regards the medical kit, looks back up at Sherlock, then sighs and scoots to the end of the sofa nearest the lamp.

Sherlock sinks down onto the sofa beside him and extends his right hand. John takes it, studies it, then looks up at Sherlock over the top of his glasses.

“You are an impossible old man and if I didn’t love you so much I’d let these things fester until your hand rots and falls off."

Sherlock bites his bottom lip as John begins to work on his hand without further comment. Sherlock has butchered the job rather severely, and his hand is already swollen and red.

John fetches a bowl of ice water when he’s finished, and Sherlock submerges his hand without instruction. Fifteen minutes, then an antihistamine.

“If I catch you out there without gloves again, the hives are going,” John says. He’s still sitting on the end of the sofa, and Sherlock is lying down now, head in John’s lap, swollen hand resting on his stomach.

He means it.

But he also meant it when he said he’d let the stings fester this time, and Sherlock meant it when he said they were not going to visit Mycroft after he’d fallen and broken his ankle. 

They’d taken him flowers, and a small jar of honey. 

Now, John runs his hand through Sherlock’s salt and pepper curls. Sherlock sighs and closes his eyes.

“Soup and sandwiches for dinner, then?” John asks.

And Sherlock hums his approval.


	3. The Game is On

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Violence isn't limited to life in London. Perhaps Sherlock and John aren't as old as they think.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I have no real intention in establishing case fic here - though it could go that way. Just another slice of life in the Holmes/Watson household.

He’s napping when they come.

Sherlock has gone off to Mrs. Dobbins’ house, a brisk one-mile walk on this sunny, cool day. Mrs. Dobbins has lost her cat again, and it’s Sherlock’s turn to find her. He grumbles a bit, but it’s a good-natured sort of grumbling. Mrs. Dobbins is rather like a Mrs. Hudson for them, with a checkered past, an endearing kick-ass attitude, and excellent tea and biscuits. They’d both go, but John is still nursing the twisted ankle.

Which is Sherlock’s fault. Sherlock should never have been in the tree to begin with, swarm or no swarm. If John hadn’t glanced out the kitchen window and seen him, he’d never have run outside and tripped over the Wellingtons Sherlock left at the top of the porch stairs.

So Sherlock goes, and John settles in with his tablet to read the London news, his leg propped up on a pillow on the sofa. He dozes off after he’s read all that’s worth reading.

He wakes to someone turning him over roughly and pressing his face into the sofa cushions. His hands are being taped behind his back. He struggles out of instinct, but can hardly breathe, so gives it up, gasping, managing to turn his head to the side a fraction.

Bad idea. They don’t want to be seen. His head is yanked up, a strap of tape covers his eyes, another his mouth. He hears it being ripped from the roll, then his feet are bound too. 

It’s not an altogether unfamiliar position, but he’s twenty-five years older than he was the last time this happened, and he’s been taken by surprise.

He doesn’t panic.

There are more than one of them in the cottage. They are looking for something – clearly – he can hear things crashing to the floor as the intruders tear through shelves and cupboards.

In his muddled, oxygen-deprived mind, he worries that Sherlock isn’t safe. That the trip to Mrs. Dobbins’ home to find the lost cat was a ruse. 

He is trapped. Helpless. In a good deal of pain. They weren’t gentle with him, and his arms are in an unnatural position, his shoulders already aching.

They leave him like this, on his stomach, still bound, and when they leave, he struggles until he slides off the sofa.

He hits his head on the corner of the coffee table, then bangs it against the floor. His hip hits hard as the rest of his body follows his head. 

He is angry. Livid. Bloody furious. 

His head is bleeding. He can feel the liquid pool under his cheek, warm against the cold of the hardwood floor.

ooOoo

Sherlock takes his time walking home. He’s got deep scratches on his hands from the cat, who had not wanted to get down from the shed roof. Two cups of excellent tea and a lemon square had helped a bit, and he’ll have John patch up the scratches when he gets inside. John won’t be angry – scratches aren’t bee stings, and John was the one who sent him to Mrs. Dobbins in the first place.

He rounds the last corner. The front door of their cottage is standing open.

Odd.

He picks up his pace, and by the time he is running across the porch he’s found two sets of boot prints going in each direction, and tire tracks in the soft grass along the road.

“John!” He pushes into the house, shouldering the door instead of touching the doorknob.

There is no answering voice from the house in shambles, and Sherlock, heart in his throat, moving faster than he has in years, tears into the sitting room and finds John on the floor between the sofa and the coffee table.

Fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck.

His cheek rests in a pool of blood.

Sherlock doesn’t know where to start. He cannot remain objective. 

Mobile.

He pries it out of his pocket with shaking hand, and rests his fingers on John’s neck, feeling his pulse, as he calls emergency services. The feel of the blood pulsing through John’s arteries centers him enough to be able to answer the simple questions he’s being asked. His fingers fumble as he makes sure there is nothing obstructing John’s nose.

He doesn’t know what to address first. The blood, he decides, and drops the mobile to the floor even though the dispatcher has told him to stay on the line with her until the police and ambulance arrive.

He pulls the scarf from his neck and presses it to the wound on John’s head. John is moaning through the tape now, and Sherlock begins to peel it away from his mouth, trying not to cause him any more pain.

“I’m here. I’m here. I’m here.” It’s a mantra of sorts, all he can think to say. John can’t speak, can’t see him, can’t move his arms or legs. 

Sherlock begins to work on the tape over John’s eyes. It’s delicate work, and painful for John, but Sherlock hates that tape, needs to see John’s face.

Sherlock is beginning to hyperventilate when the medics arrive.

“I’m here, John. I’m here,” he says, more loudly than before, as he is helped to the sofa – pushed back onto it, more like. Someone is taking his pulse, taking his coat off, fitting a blood pressure cuff over his arm. Asking him about the cuts on his hands.

Cat scratches. Not cuts. He’s been to Mrs. Dobbins to find her bloody cat. He’s not the one who did this to his John. 

Bloody idiots.

They are asking him now about John. Blood type and allergies and medications.

Facts. Facts he knows. He rattles them off and watches as the medics confer with one of the officers, then begin to cut the tape from John’s arms and legs.

He leaves with one of the constables, following the ambulance. The constable reaches over and fastens the seatbelt around him before they set off. He glares. He’s perfectly capable of putting on a seatbelt. He answers questions on the way to hospital. No warning. No idea who might have broken in. No contractors or workers in the house recently. No one suspicious loitering about.

John has a mild concussion, a dislocated shoulder, a badly bruised hip. Abrasions on the wrists and face. He gets six sutures in his scalp where the corner of the coffee table interrupted his fall from the sofa.

They keep him overnight for observation.

In the end, the staff relents and lets Sherlock sleep in John’s bed. It’s a small hospital, and everyone knows them from the time John was hospitalised with shingles. They’d rather not deal with Sherlock roaming the corridors after hours, slipping into the morgue, sabotaging the coffee machine.

Sherlock clings to John. In the twenty-seven years they’ve been sharing a bed, he’s learned he sleeps better with John in a hospital bed than without him in the most luxurious hotel suite.

He’s released at noon the next day. A black car meets them at the hospital and takes them back to their cottage. Sherlock never tips the driver.

The losses from the robbery are telling, and add up to unacceptable.

They’ve taken the laptops and tablets and John’s mobile.

The skull is gone. The deerstalker. The famous Belstaff, the style from another era, that’s been hanging in the spare bedroom since they moved here from London.

When John discovers they’ve taken the violin, he is supposed to be resting in bed. But he’s remembered the violin while lying there, and reaches underneath for the case. His fingers meet empty air.

John isn’t just angry now. He’s more than irate, more than furious.

John is _violated_.

He sits up carefully, stands with effort, shrugs off his dressing gown and finds his trousers. He dresses in a green button-down and cardigan, sits again to put on his shoes and tie them. He’s dizzy already from the exertion, but soldiers on. 

He limps slowly into the sitting room on an ankle that’s still achy. Sherlock is sitting on the sofa looking like he doesn’t know where to start in getting the house back in order. He looks at John, from buttoned shirt to tied shoes, and does not make the mothering comment that rises to his lips. He knows better. He sees John’s face.

“Your violin,” John says.

Sherlock’s face falls. 

“Let’s go after the bastards,” John continues.

Sherlock stares at John. 

John is nearing seventy. He’s still limping from the encounter with the Wellingtons – an encounter he’s not yet let Sherlock forget. His left shoulder has recently been dislocated, but his left hand clenches, unclenches at his side. His hair is shaved in a wide swath around the stitches in his head. He has a mild concussion and angry red stripes across his face from the tape.

He’s angry and he means business.

He’s beautiful like this.

Sherlock has, of course, already given in and contacted Mycroft. The Yard is on the case, but the look on John’s face….

Sherlock stands.

The game is on.


	4. Chapter 4

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Sherlock's hat, coat, skull and violin have been stolen. But he can't - won't - tell John he's solved the crime.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Was in the mood for a bit of angst. Hope you enjoy the conclusion.

Chapter 4

Once upon a time John was a doctor doing locum work and asking pretty ladies to dinner.

Once upon a time Sherlock was a consulting detective who needed a flat mate and was definitely – decidedly – married to his work.

Once upon a time Sherlock fell off the face of the earth, and John asked a pretty lady to marry him, and Sherlock clawed his way back to life.

Back to John.

He doesn’t take John for granted anymore, doesn’t take their life together for granted. He has spent thirty years of his life observing John, deducing John, _loving_ John.

Still, he has managed to underestimate John’s possessiveness of him, John’s passion for him, John’s protection over him.

He sits in a London café after visiting Detective Investigator Carter at New Scotland Yard, and pretends to drink his tea, pretends to be relaxed, pretends that the theft – the surgical removal – of the possessions which defined him as England’s only consulting detective, does not bother him. Because they are safe, because John was not as badly injured as he could have been, because the stolen items are only _things_ and cannot possibly unbalance the scales when they still have each other. 

He didn’t need a visit to every pawn shop in East and West Sussex to know that none of it – the coat, the hat, the violin, the skull - _none of it_ would be there. He is quite sure –having collected all the clues and considered all the possibilities – that these possessions are no longer in the country, and that they won’t turn up for sale. 

But he doesn’t tell John, _cannot_ tell John, that he has solved the crime already. He tells him only that it is a fanatic, someone who has an unhealthy obsession with him.

He does not say it is a bitter person. Someone bereft of the one she wanted. Someone without music in her own life. Without warmth. Without companionship.

The violin. The coat and hat. The skull.

Symbols, all. Music of the heart. Warmth and security like a fine woolen coat. A voiceless companion to hear one’s troubles. 

John at Sherlock’s coattails. Sherlock lulling him to sleep with a quiet lullabye.

Mycroft has slipped him a dossier and he studies it now, waiting here in the café while John is visiting his sister. 

She is in Brussels. Her face is as old as John’s, but more careworn. She has a different name, and is wasting away with an illness that will take her life in a matter of months. 

He tosses the file before John joins him.

ooOoo

When the box arrives at their cottage four months later, Sherlock is out at the hives, so John signs for the box and lugs it inside.

He cuts it open.

The skull is inside the hat, and John caresses it, places it on the fireplace mantel.

The violin is still in its case, and he opens it, and blinks away traitorous tears.

He sits on the sofa as he pulls out the coat, and drapes it on his lap.

But the box isn’t empty. He pulls out last an oatmeal-coloured jumper, one he didn’t even know was gone.

He stares at it, surprised, confused, then drops it on the coat and hurries out to fetch Sherlock.

The jumper is not a puzzle to John. He sees it as a triviality. He is delighted to have the violin, ecstatic to hold the Belstaff, even glad for the familiar company of the skull.

It is Sherlock who picks up the jumper when John has gone to the kitchen, who presses it to his face and inhales deeply.

It is Sherlock who breathes in the fading aroma of Clair de Lune.

_Fin_


End file.
